Surrey Journal

Canada's Torn Sikhs: In a Holy Place, Unholy Rage

By ANTHONY DePALMA

Published: February 20, 1997

SURREY, British Columbia—
Chairs and tables are lined up on one side of the big community room at the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple and long red floor mats on the other. Members of the temple eat their post-prayer meals of lentils and flat bread in silence, some sitting on chairs, others cross-legged on mats.

But not long ago, this same Sikh temple across the street from a McDonald's Restaurant in this suburb about 20 miles southeast of Vancouver was the scene of a violent confrontation that many here interpreted as an extension of old religious disputes to life in a new world.

Deeply orthodox members of the temple reportedly lashed angrily at other members with knives, clubs and ceremonial swords, slicing through one man's ear, dislocating an executive committee member's arm, smashing a teen-age girl over the head and stabbing a man in the side -- all because of a dispute over whether the Sikh Code of Conduct requires members to sit on floor mats or allows them to use chairs.

Or was it?

''This is not a table and chair issue,'' said Harmohinder Singh Bains, a brawny 38-year-old member of the temple. ''The whole thing is about power, ego and money.''

Mr. Bains, who is clean shaven and wears gray cowboy boots, is what is known as a ''lightly burdened'' Sikh -- that is, he does not wear a turban or let his beard and hair grow uncut.

Sikhism is a religion that arose in the Punjab region of India from the teachings of a 15th-century guru named Nanak, who laid down its tenets of equality, monotheism and self-restraint. Interpreting those ideas and the Code of Conduct is left up to each community. This has been a source of endless conflict both in the Punjab and in the many new places where Sikhs live.

Mr. Bains belongs to the faction of reform-minded Sikhs who in December 1995 wrested control of the temple -- one of the largest in Canada -- and its $1 million a year in contributions from an executive committee dominated by orthodox Sikhs that had been in power for more than a decade.

''The Western media refer to them as fundamentalists but really they are just hooligans out to cause trouble,'' Mr. Bains said.

But the president of the committee until the last election, Piara Singh Natt, a trucking company executive, bristles at the term ''fundamentalist.''

''Is it fundamentalism to adhere strictly to what we are told to do by the highest authorities in Sikhism?'' Mr. Natt said in an interview.

Since the confrontation at the temple, Mr. Natt has stayed away, preferring to listen to services on the radio while praying in his spacious home several miles away.

He wears his hair and beard long, and in the middle of an interview at home he unbuttoned his shirt to show the small brass and steel dagger called a kirpan that he, like many devout Sikhs, wears every minute of the day, even while he sleeps, as a symbol of readiness to defend the faith.

''This was a very unfortunate incident,'' Mr. Natt said of the clash over chairs and mats. ''Yes, people were slashed. But not with swords. And not with kirpan. They used utensils from the kitchen.''

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police had to break up the fight. They arrested five Sikhs for assault and attempted murder and have warrants out for four others. The Mounties, who occupied the temple for several days and searched it, using dogs, found more ceremonial swords and weapons stashed away.

The Mounties relinquished control only after both sides agreed to a compromise that allowed both chairs and mats to be used until the executive committee can reach a permanent solution.

Now, on the back wall of the dining hall, there is a sign in Punjabi prohibiting ''proselytizing or speeches with respect to the issue of the use and presence of chairs versus mats.''

But the settlement is only temporary, as may be the peace. Sikhism is based on ideals of equality, Mr. Bains said, and the traditional meal after prayers is an important demonstration that all temple members are equal. Therefore, no one's head should be above another's.

And there are the accusations by the ''lightly burdened'' that their predecessors are really trying to regain control of the temple and of the cash box where the faithful leave their donations.

Mr. Bains and others contend that the previous administration had funneled money to India in support of militant groups fighting for the creation of a Sikh homeland, known as Khalistan, in the Punjab.

''And if it wasn't going there, the money had to be going into somebody's pocket,'' Mr. Bains said.

Mr. Natt flatly denied that even a penny had ever been taken from the temple treasury or sent to the militants. He said that his followers support the idea of an independent Sikh homeland, but he said, ''I do not preach violence.''

This is not the first time Canada has found itself embroiled in Sikh disputes. In 1985 a bomb went off on an Air-India jumbo jet heading from Vancouver to India. The jet crashed off the coast of Ireland, killing all 329 people aboard. Most were Canadians of Indian descent, and officials have attributed the bombing to retaliation over India's attack on a Sikh shrine in 1984.

Last December the Mounties' lead investigator said he expected to charge several suspects in the 1985 bombing by late winter or early spring. The Mounties have long said they suspected that Sikh militants from Vancouver were responsible for the bombing, although they have never suggested that anyone from Guru Nanak Temple was involved.

The walls of the dining hall at the temple are covered with gruesome paintings of decapitations and other horrors that Indian Moguls once used to suppress the Sikhs. Alongside the paintings are modern photographs showing Sikh separatist warriors in India brandishing AK-47's and other assault weapons. The photographs seem eerily out of place in a religious building, especially one that so recently witnessed such an outburst of violence.

Mr. Bains tried to explain that the photographs do not glorify violence and that for Sikhs, violence is condoned only when every other measure has failed.

''Yes these photographs show violence,'' he said, ''but it is a different kind of violence.''

Later, he tried again to explain the presence of the photographs. ''Actually,'' he said, ''the people who put the pictures here were from the other committee.''

Photo: At the Guru Nanak Sikh Temple in Surrey, British Columbia, one group of members wants to eat at tables and another on floor mats, but the divisions go deeper. Violence between the two groups erupted recently. (Todd Korol for The New York Times)